Earlier this year, the General Counsel of The Mother Church, and his assistant, spoke to employees at the Christian Science Center, encouraging them to view legal challenges from a spiritual perspective. (Mr. Jones has subsequently been appointed Manager of Committees on Publication, and Mr. Bort has become General Counsel.) They emphasized that, even in litigation, Christian Scientists need to be alert to opportunities to respond to the needs of those whom Mary Baker Eddy described as the "millions of unprejudiced minds—simple seekers for Truth . . . ." Science and Health, p. 570 They said the Church's legal challenges have placed it at the heart of some of the most important constitutional issues facing the United States, such as:
•government control over family matters;
•court involvement in the internal affairs of
religious organizations; and
•government health policy and accommodation
of religious minorities.
In their lunch-hour presentation, they used as an example recent court challenges to religious accommodations in the Medicare and Medicaid laws. These accommodations allow payment for nonmedical nursing care for individuals relying solely on prayer for healing. Here are excerpts from the discussion:
Gary Jones: Mrs. Eddy writes in Unity of Good: "The Science of physical harmony, as now presented to the people in divine light, is radical enough to promote as forcible collisions of thought as the age has strength to bear." Unity of Good, p. 6 She also observes that the "leaven of Truth is ever at work," leavening the modes of thought. Science and Health, p. 118 (She is referring here to Christ Jesus' parable of the "leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal." Matt. 13:33) So it should not be surprising that the very Church affirming the presence of this leaven would participate in some of the stirrings and changes it induces in society. This leavening extends to human government, bringing about a higher understanding of justice and individual rights.
